Technical Communication Skills for EAL Students 2 COMM 0003

Communication Course

Course Overview

This course provides students with the writing, speaking, listening, and reading skills required to succeed in BCIT's other Professional English Language Development courses. You will practice grammar skills and language structures useful for technical communication, including writing and speaking about your background, writing formal definitions and descriptions, summarizing, and making presentations. NOTE: Seat availability is limited and registration is on a first-come-first-serve basis only. We do not guarantee or reserve seats for students with no exceptions. Please also be mindful that taking the COMM 0015 test and receiving a placement does NOT guarantee students a seat for a course in the next available term/schedule. Financial aid is also available for this course. Your application must be submitted NO LATER THAN THE FIRST DAY OF CLASS. Note: This course is now offered in the EPAS program as EPAS 0351

Prerequisite(s)

For admission into COMM 0003, students must have completed ONE of the following: (1) COMM 0015 (placement at the COMM 0003 level) within the past 12 months OR (2) Completion of COMM 0071 within the last 2 months OR (3) CLB/LINC or CELPIP score of 6 or better in both reading and writing within the last 12 months OR (4) IELTS (academic format only) of 5.0 or better in both reading and writing within the last 24 months OR (5) Completion of ELSK 520 through the VCC Pathway program OR (6) Completion of ISEP Level 4 with 50% or better in each course (if taken before January 2021) OR (7) TAE 3 with 50% (if taken after January 2021) OR (8) Completion of LEAP 5 through the Langara LEAP program OR (9) TOEFL overall score of 35 or better within the last 24 months OR (10) CAEL score of 35 or better within the last 12 months. Please check our website for other placement level(s) if your scores do not meet the prerequisites for COMM 0003: https://www.bcit.ca/computing-academic-studies/communication/professional-english-language-development/placement/ .

Credits

0.0

Not offered this term: This course is not offered this term. Notify me to receive email notifications when the course opens for registration next term.

Learning Outcomes

Writing skills

Organize ideas using some pre-writing techniques
Draft, revise and edit paragraphs
With the help of correction symbols, identify common grammatical components and correct identified errors
Use concrete content vocabulary
Write descriptive and expository paragraphs on a familiar or concrete topic
Use personal experience to write paragraphs
Review and practice the basic components of effective technical paragraph writing and some multi-paragraph assignments
Make some adjustment for audience, purpose and intended effects

Speaking skills

Participate in a variety of group or paired activities
Deliver 2 or 3 individual presentations (description, interview and process)
Organize thoughts and ideas in terms of purpose, sequence, language
Respond to questions and feedback in familiar and predictable contexts
Demonstrate the use of some basic presentation skills (body language, timing, eye contact)
Express and/or explain ideas, opinions and feelings about familiar topics with rare reliance on re-wording or rephrasing
Use a varying range of concrete vocabulary and some idiomatic expressions for use in classroom discussions on general topics
Have a good range of technical language in their particular field
Use a limited range of structures. (Errors, while frequent, do not prevent communication. Pronunciation, however, may impede understanding.)

Reading skills

Comprehend selected authentic texts and/or supported materials of moderate length (newspaper and magazine articles and manuals) within a less familiar context
Analyze sections of texts for main ideas, supporting details, purpose and meaning, distinguish fact from opinion
Use context, title, headings and format to predict and determine information about a text
Adjust reading rate according to task (skimming and scanning a variety of passages)
Comprehend high frequency content words
Accept some ambiguity in reading passages
Use context clues to guess meaning of unfamiliar words. Use affixes and roots in decoding
Use a monolingual learners' dictionary

Listening skills

Understand to a significant degree most conversations on a variety of normal general topics at a normal rate of speech
Understand selected information delivered through a variety of broadcast media (radio, television, video )
Distinguish between formal informal register in speech with some effectiveness
Understand most natural speech containing a variety of structures, with some dependence on repetition
Understand sufficient concrete and abstract vocabulary, idioms, and expressions to follow classroom discussions on general topics
Understand ideas, opinions, and feeling about familiar topics and activities and technical and conceptual language related to their specialization
Follow instructions with some repetition from instructor
Understand group discussion and conversations 75% of the time

Effective as of Fall 2003

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